Associative or content-addressable memories are utilized for making a high-speed search for a specific word in a cache memory or buffer storage, which temporarily stores part of the information of the main memory. For example, in an array processor a subroutine is known by a specific identifier code. At any juncture it is possible to hold only a limited number of different subroutines within the array processor. When an executing program calls a subroutine, it is important to be able to quickly obtain access to a table entry that describes and/or controls the called subroutine or to determine that it is absent from the array processor and to invoke a procedure to obtain the needed subroutine from the main memory.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an associative memory system that provides a key word, such as a pointer address, in response to a code word that is presented to it for association.